(Cat)astrophe
by Bookdancer
Summary: They hadn't planned on coming out yet. They definitely hadn't planned on coming out like this. Aka Neil went shopping for the cats, got into a hostage situation, and then things fell apart. Featuring hurt Neil and protective Andrew. Andreil Week 2019
1. Chapter 1

_A/N:_

_this was written for the 2019 andreil week, day 5: cats; hence the title, lol_

_also thanks to queenofmoons67 (tumblr handle) for beta-ing and for the punny title_

_i do not own the foxhole court, and i've also cross-posted this fic to ao3 (Bookdancer) and tumblr ( bookdancerfics)_

_WARNINGS: hostage situations_

_i hope you all enjoy the fic!_

* * *

(Cat)astrophe Chapter One

All Neil had wanted was to pick up more dry food for King and Sir, maybe try out some new cat treats, and definitely get some more cat toys to pretend to hide from Andrew. He was just about to walk up to the register, the person in front of him getting their items bagged, when a gunshot went off.

Neil hit the deck, his heart pounding. All he could think was _my dad's men found me_, and then _the Moriyamas no longer have any use for me_, and then he thought of Kevin and Jean and how they were supposed to be safe, and he almost choked on his own panic. He forced himself to take large, gulping breaths, his chest heaving and his eyes squeezed shut.

His dad was dead, he reminded himself. His men were in jail or no longer looking for Neil. The Moriyamas would never take care of a loose asset in such a public way.

Someone's heavy boot prodded his side, and he looked up. The person above him was tall, probably about Matt's height, with a black ski-mask covering their face. They wore black pants, but rather than the classic all-black ensemble, they wore a red turtleneck. Behind them were four more people, all in the same outfit but with differently colored turtlenecks.

The one in blue was the shortest, but still taller than Neil, and thicker, with sunglasses on even though it was overcast outside. Green and purple were about the same height and size, making Neil wonder if they were twins or just people of remarkably similar build. And the last one, in pink, had ginger hair sticking out from beneath their ski-mask.

Neil had the sudden thought that Allison would find the pink on ginger incredibly clashing. He clapped his hand over his mouth to hide his sudden smile.

"Oy," Red said, and prodded him with their boot again. "If you're gonna be sick, do it over with the rest of them."

Neil looked where Red pointed, and a dozen obviously terrified people looked back. There were also a few others, one who looked like she was doing her best to put on a brave face, and two more who had tightened mouths and narrowed eyes. Neil would bet that they were angry more than anything else. Three of them wore the store uniform, and a young girl clutched a small puppy to her chest. A couple others looked like they were just teenagers.

It looked like Neil was the last hostage, and when Red pointedly gestured with their gun, he pushed himself to his feet, straightened to his full height, and walked just as pointedly to the hostages, looking Red in the eye the whole way.

Red bristled, and Neil couldn't stop his own smirk. Red had a good foot on Neil, but still admitted that they felt threatened by him just looking them in the eye.

"Keep an eye on them, Red," Purple said. "You, too, Pink. Green and Blue, with me. Bring the manager with you."

The four nodded, sharp, and then split up, with Blue dragging one of the people in uniform with them. Neil took the advantage of no longer having Red's attention on him to look around.

Red and Pink each stood on one side of the hostages, their guns pointed in the hostages' relative direction. The front of the store had been barricaded, and a security guard lay on the ground a few feet away, gagged, hogtied, and probably unconscious.

Outside, sirens wailed.

The store phone rang a few minutes later, but neither Red nor Pink jumped, although a good half of the hostages did.

Pink jerked their head toward the phone. "One of you go answer that."

Neil started to stand, and one of the employees and someone else in a Captain America shirt did the same.

"_One_," Pink snapped. Their gun wavered. Neil glanced at the other two, and they both stared back at him. Slowly, Neil sat back down, and so did the employee, until only Captain America Shirt was still standing. Relief stood out, stark, on the employee's face. Neil fought to control his own expression, but his heart hammered in his chest and he couldn't guarantee anything. Most of his mind was screaming at him to not be noticed any more than he already was. The rest was yelling for him to run.

Pink drew a second gun, this one looking more like a handgun than the more serious, rapid-fire weapon pointed at the hostages. The mouth of the handgun pointed at Captain America Shirt.

"Answer it," Pink said. The phone rang again. Captain America Shirt took a hesitant step toward it, then paused, looked back at all the hostages, and practically sprinted the rested of the way.

"Careful what you say," Red warned, "or someone gets it."

"H—" Captain America Shirt said after he picked up the phone, then coughed and cleared his throat. "Hello?"

Slowly, Red's gun shifted until its target was obviously Neil's chest. Neil stared back.

"This is Sam Young," Captain America Shirt — Sam — said. "I'm a hostage."

There was a pause, and Sam looked back at them.

"I don't think it's safe for me to answer that." Another pause. "Yes… No… there's sixtee—"

Someone's gun went off.

Neil's ears rang, and he clapped his hands over them, trying to block out the screams of everyone else.

"I'm sorry!" Sam's voice rose above everyone else's, desperate, but when Neil finally looked back up, Red and Pink hadn't moved. No one was bleeding. As far as Neil could tell, the gunshot hadn't come from that area of the building.

Green hurried from the back of the building, where they had disappeared with Purple, Blue, and the manager several minutes before.

"Sorry!" they called, and there was a pause in which Neil wondered if they had smiled at them behind their ski-mask. "Just a misunderstanding; Purple took care of it. I'm here for an employee who actually feels up to cooperating."

This time, in the pause, Neil knew for certain that Green was smiling, and something squeezed his lungs till he was breathless.

There was red spattering across the sleeve of Green's turtleneck.

The employee who had almost stood with Neil earlier stood again, terror written across her face, but she looked back at them, and Neil realized for the first time that the third and last employee looked like he was probably still in high school.

And then, right as Green was about to leave, they turned around and peered back at the hostages.

"That one looks familiar," they told Red. With a sinking feeling, Neil realized that Green was pointing at him.

"Does he?" Red asked, and they stepped forward until their gun pressed right against the side of Neil's head. Fingers laced through his hair, pulled tight till it hurt, and jerked his head up until his eyes found Green's. "Take a better look."

Green stared back, and Neil was uncomfortably aware of the fact that Green could read every expression on his face, while Neil couldn't read a single one of Green's. And then, just as Neil was starting to think that _maybe_ he could get away with being Neil Josten —

Green stiffened, and Neil knew he'd been recognized.

"That's Neil Josten," Green said.

"No I'm not," Neil said, and then internally winced. Smart mouth plus hiding his identity for a good decade did not a smart decision make, apparently.

Red must have agreed, because metal struck across his cheek, sending Neil tumbling to the ground. In a daze and trying to get to his knees again, Neil realized that he'd been pistol whipped. His hands couldn't support his weight, though, and in the end he just let himself lay on the cool tile.

"Call Purple back in here," Red said, their voice fading in and out of Neil's hearing. "It looks like the plan is changing."

* * *

_A/N:_

_i haven't finished writing this fic yet, but the rest should be coming soon_

_also, i have a tumblr account, bookdancerfics, so please feel free to drop by. sometimes i post writing updates_

_and, finally, please comment here! i love hearing what people think_


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N:_

_oh my gosh, i'm so sorry. i was just looking in on my fics today and realized i never updated this one, even though it's been updated on ao3 for weeks now. at least you'll have a shorter wait between ch2 and ch3 than them? ha...ha...ha.. yeah. i'm so sorry. anyway,_

_just a heads up that there's a pov switch here, from neil to andrew. i'll be switching back and forth between them for every chapter till the fic is done_

_(also, the fic is officially all plotted out, it just needs to be written. unfortunately i still have no idea how many chapters this'll be, although at the moment i'm thinking 4 or 5)_

_finally, thanks to my beta, queenofmoons67 (tumblr handle)_

_i hope you all enjoy the new chapter!_

* * *

(Cat)astrophe Chapter Two

Andrew got the call at five in the afternoon, just as the cats started meowing and thumping their heads into his legs.

"Dinner's at six," he told them, "so you'll just have to wait."

They meowed some more, so he ignored them and picked up the phone.

"Neil Josten's fantastic menagerie of cats," he said in greeting.

There was an awkward silence, and whoever was on the other end coughed and then cleared their throat.

"Andrew Minyard?" Their voice was more serious than he expected, heavy with something he couldn't name.

"Yes," Andrew said.

"This is Captain Juan Bradley with the Walkerton* police department. We have a situation, and we need you to come down to the pet store on Seventeenth and Aspen."

Andrew stiffened. At his feet, King wove her way through his legs.

"The pet store," Andrew said.

"Yes," Bradley said.

Andrew turned to the door, grabbing his car keys as he went. "What's wrong with Neil."

* * *

Andrew broke at least twelve traffic laws on his way to the pet store, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. Instead he swerved the car into the parking lot, parked across half of two separate spaces, and then marched right up into the closest police officer's personal space.

"Juan Bradley," he told her.

Wide eyes greeted him, but she still pointed him toward the type of van typically used for police intelligence.

Inside, a short man — taller than Andrew, but still short — with thin, balding hair looked up from a computer screen.

"Captain Bradley," the officer said, holding his hand out for Andrew to shake.

"Andrew Minyard," he said, and ignored the man's hand in favor of looking at the screen. It was split into nine separate sections, each with a black and white video and a timestamp. "Where's Neil?"

Bradley's mouth soured, and Andrew waited for him to pull rank, but instead the officer just pointed at a figure in the center of one of the videos. From what Andrew could make out, Neil was laying on the ground, the rest of the hostages behind him while the gunmen pointed their guns at everyone.

"They want the equivalent of Josten's salary for this season," Bradley said.

"We can't give it to them," Andrew said.

"I'm sorry, but we can't—" Bradley stopped abruptly and looked at Andrew. "Sorry, what?"

Andrew looked back and curled his fingers over his left armband. "We can't give it to them. Keep up."

"Why… okay," Bradley said, and Andrew knew he wanted to ask why, if Andrew had known the police's procedure when it came to bank robbers and not giving in to demands, or if Andrew had another reason. And Andrew _did_, because giving them Neil's full seasonal salary would be the equivalent of sentencing three people to death, of sentencing _Neil _to death, but there was no need for Bradley to know that.

"Why did you call me here?" Andrew asked instead, cutting off whatever Bradley may have wanted to add. "You won't let me go in there myself, obviously, and you wouldn't have given them the money anyway, so there's some other reason you want me here. What is it?"

Bradley glanced away, and at first Andrew thought he was being cowardly, avoiding Andrew's glare, but then he followed Bradley's gaze.

On screen, Neil shoved himself to his knees. One of the thieves stepped forward, towering over him, but then Neil looked up and even on such a small display, Andrew knew Neil had said something cutting. The taller of the two thieves planted a boot in Neil's chest, and he went flying backward.

Andrew turned from the videos and marched toward the van's door. His knives were in his armbands, there were only two thieves on that camera, and it was time that people relearned what happened to those who hurt Neil Josten.

"He asked for you," Bradley said behind him. Andrew paused in the doorway. "Neil, I mean. The suspects have another hostage relaying all of their demands; he said that Neil specifically asked for you to get the money."

Andrew turned around, his hands falling back to his sides from where they'd been gripping his armbands. Bradley was no longer sitting, but standing, his mouth pressed into a firm line.

"And see," Bradley said. "The thing is, I may not be an exy fan myself, but my daughter sure is, and I've listened to enough of her ranting to know that you and Josten are supposed to have some crazy rivalry type of thing going on. So why the hell would he trust you of all people in this situation?"

"See," Andrew said, "Sometimes, people can only report on what they think they know."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bradley asked.

Andrew just ignored him, instead turning and making his way from the van.

Another officer stopped him in his tracks. She was holding a bulletproof vest in one hand, despite the fact she was already wearing one, and what looked like a small earpiece in the other hand.

"Andrew Minyard?" she said, and then nodded to the space behind him. "Captain Bradley, sir."

"Get on with it," Andrew said.

She looked at him again and held out the spare vest and earpiece. "These are yours."

Andrew took them, narrowing his eyes at her, and then turned to glare at Bradley. He raised the items in a silent demand.

Bradley just looked back. "I thought you may like those. Put them on, stay behind the caution tape, and I promise that you'll be the first one inside after all of us."

"Us?"

"The police." Bradley shook his head. "I won't pretend to understand what's going on between you and Josten, or why Josten specifically asked for you, but if compromise is what you need to not storm a delicate situation, then I'll give it to you."

Andrew didn't hold out his hand to shake, didn't nod his agreement. Instead, he shrugged into the vest, put on his earpiece, and walked back into the van to commandeer the only chair.

He had a junkie to look out for.

* * *

_A/N:_

_* there's no actual significance to this, i was just listening to walk the moon and trying to come up with a town so walkerton it was_

_also, thank you so much for reading! i hope you all enjoyed, and friendly reminder that my tumblr is bookdancerfics, so feel free to bother me there (i say bother, but i swear i'll be happy to see you)_

_sorry again that i forgot to update here earlier (i would've sworn i did), and please don't be afraid to comment!_


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